School Activity Fee

Information Regarding the Collection of Money for School Activities
September 2011

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

The issue of ongoing requests for money for school visits, shows and various events has always been a difficult one to manage for both the school and parents.

In the past, every time a trip or event was organised that required a request to parents for payment, a notice was sent home on an individual basis.  This system has proved very cumbersome for teachers, parents and school administration staff. It is time consuming to track and chase payments of such small amounts and often just another task in a parent’s already busy day to find, say, $3.50 to send to school.

The Board has thought long and hard about this process and has decided to streamline the system, requesting parents to pay these costs through a one off annual activity payment. This will cover all class trips, school trips, performances at school and water safety courses.  It will also cover school-subsidised curriculum based sporting events such as swimming sports, athletics, school triathlon and cross country.  The school will not request additional money during the year for these activities and the payment will not be broken down into separate activities for refund purposes.

This activity payment is merely a summation of existing trip/activity monetary requests. 

The 2013 activity payment will be:

Junior Syndicate (NE to Yr2)                                                       $44.00
Middle Syndicate (Yr 3-4) and Senior Syndicate (Yr 5-6)         $48.00

You will be billed in term one and we are happy to discuss payment options (such as term by term payments) as necessary.

The school will support children who qualify to represent the school at interschool events such as cross country and swimming sports by meeting the costs for entry at such events including South Cluster and Western Bay.

It is separate from any school camp fees and the usual consumable fee, school donation and stationery packs.

Optional and additional activities which various children elect to participate in such as ICAS, Young Leaders, Choir, Future Problem Solving, Focus on Fun, Bookclub, Top School, Gymnastics and out of school sports including netball, hockey, flippaball, cricket, miniball, and kiwi tag cannot fairly be covered by this fee and will continue to be billed separately.

We are hoping that the introduction of this system of payment will be more effective and straightforward for everyone involved.

From    The Tauranga Primary School Board of Trustees